mail-bag
Latest
The Lawbringer: Mail bag 11
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks. I'll beat this dead horse until it rains horse pieces -- thank you all so much for coming out to the WoW Insider Show live podcast at PAX East. There was a lot of love in that room, especially for Lawbringer, which was a pleasant surprise. More people asked me about specific Lawbringer topics than anything else I write about, so you all must be enjoying something going on here. Speaking of you, I've got a couple of emails that you sent in that I'd like to answer. Reading your reactions and opinions about the subjects of these articles is great in the comments, since there is instant gratification, but there is something about the delayed reaction and thoughtfulness of an email. I may not agree with you -- I usually don't agree with anyone, much less myself -- but I'll read what you've got to say.
The Lawbringer: Mailbag 7.0
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Wow! Did you see all those cool announcements and awesome World of Warcraft news items that we are currently reporting on? Me too. I'm writing this article much earlier than BlizzCon, so you'll have to excuse my lack of foresight. How about we mailbag us some Lawbringer questions? Albert wants to know what's up with gold sellers stealing gold and why Blizzard can't just track it and remove it. Seems simple, right? Hello, love your column. I was wondering if you can explain something. When these gold sellers hack someone's account and move their gold, can't blizzard track where the gold is going and just claim it? I mean i assume they have the tools to do anything in game, they are god. Seems simple enough to do, i got hacked, see where gold went, take it back. do it for a few months and done. am i missing something? Thanks in advance, Albert Thank you for the email, Albert. It probably is not that tough to track currency moves and associated transactions, but it's really about the volume of text and transactions that go on at any given time. It must be hell to search through all the records to find this stuff, even if you know the name and server that people are on.
Gold Capped: When glyph prices hit the wall
Every week, Gold Capped brings you tips on how to make money on the auction house. This article from inscription specialist Steve Zamboni has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Imagine a typical glyph market on a busy realm: dozens of goblins sitting hunched over their steam calculators surrounding the trading pit, each figuring their costs and profits down to the last copper trying to gain an advantage over the others. Thousands of glyphs are posted every hour, most to be canceled and reposted an hour later at even lower prices. Eventually, one of the goblins has a flash of brilliance (or cracks under the strain; the records aren't clear) and posts all of his glyphs at a loss. The calculation engines grind to a stop, leaving the goblins to stare up at the big board in silence, then at each other. "Now what?" We call it the wall. One scribe picks a price and tries to hold the entire market to that price. If it holds, the market stops at the wall, and everyone on the other side watches helplessly as sales drop to zero. Sometimes it's done to drive off competitors; sometimes it's done to dissuade new competitors from entering the market, or just to burn up excess ink supplies ... or even just out of boredom to cause pointless drama, goblin style. Like all good goblin inventions, the wall appears simple on the outside, but remains complicated (and somewhat explosive) when put into practice. One complication is that there is more actually more than one type of wall.
Gold Capped: WoW Prospector and mailbag
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail, as well as check out the long awaited 11th episode of Call to Auction! I got an email from the creator of WoW Prospector asking me to cover it. After he assured me that his servers are housed in a fire proof room lined with asbestos and at least 300 meters from any residential zones, I agreed, mainly because it's an incredibly useful tool that has saved me a bunch of spreadsheet time. Essentially, the tool will tell you how much money you stand to make prospecting various ores, given the price of ore and what you can sell the raw gems for. Here's a screenshot of it in action:
